On Friday my group got together to compile the green screen rushes for our music video. We assembled at the RMIT green screen studio at 10am and began playing with the lighting scheme, camera configuration setup, etc. Our subject – Dan, the vocalist of Pockets – was set to arrive at 11am, which ended up being a worthwhile arrangement seeing as it took us a good hour to work out how to get the lighting and camera setup right.

Once we’d finally managed to arrange a nice, consistent green and a lighting state that would produce an appropriate silhouette we were good to go. We spent 10 or so minutes bouncing some ideas around about directing Dan’s performance and the props we could incorporate. Dan arrived around the 11:15am mark and we jumped straight into it. Although we had had a bit of discussion and pre-conceptualisation surrounding how Dan could perform in front of the camera this only very loosely guided the process, and as it tends to go the best material was improvised or planned immediately before the take.

We captured an array of performances, from Dan giving us a consistently still portrait to harnessing the stage presence of Jimmy Barnes. We experimented with Dan wearing a number of different hats to represent the subject matter of adopting multiple personalities in the song “Ten Different Names”. Some of these hats were quite conventional – caps, wide-brimmed hats – while others were quite bizarre and produced an interesting effect where only seen via a profile silhouette, my favourite being a set of fluffy headphones rotated 90 degrees on his head which somehow produced a very convincing image of a mullet.

Dan was great to work with and was willing to run along with suggestions and come in with a number of his own. He was admittedly put through a series of moderately athletic trials: a lot of falling forward, falling back and bobbing in and out of frame. He delivered each of these movements with a great energy that I think will lend itself well to the aesthetic of the video.

We experimented with some strange transition techniques which may or may not come out very well, the one that was the most time-consuming involved throwing a sheet over Dan’s head as he ducks out of frame. Playing with different props and utensils around the set and that we had brought in created a number of different effects that we will be able to alternate between in the video and hopefully create an energetic and suitably playful video.

From this experience I have gained a slightly higher level of competence with the camera and configuring lighting. It affirmed to me that having a comfortable level of initial preparation is important, while at the same time being open to the inclusion of happy accidents can be very beneficial – we had a moment in our shooting where Dan’s hat fell off at what will be a hilariously well-timed moment and will almost definitely be worthwhile including.

I now also have some insight into the process of shooting in front of a green screen, not at all complicated but also something I’d never done so I’m happy to have that one ticked off the list!